This morning, I woke up freezing.

I had a weird dream. I don’t remember the details, but it was vivid enough to make me sleep on my hands, so I had to spend a couple of minutes flexing it to make it feel at least relatively like hands, and not tofu stuck on bones.


It was cold the way that it bites, and latches, temporarily, until you rub it off or take a few minutes under the blanket. It must’ve rained prior, else it wouldn’t be so cold.


I think I like these sort of mornings. I wake up and I feel obliged to return to my cosy bed and sleep through it; somehow it felt like the only plausible thing to do. And if I couldn’t, the cold will nag me awake and I’d feel more awake than usual, Goosebumps all around and the stubborn tingle down the spine.


The cold stayed the whole day, and by evening it ten-folded and turned into rain, one that stayed into the night and would probably remain a drizzle till morning.


I said today that I’d it like to rain. I regret it now.


It probably shouldn’t have rained. But it would, and it did, because it’s that time of the year. It’s that season, and it’s that rain that comes after a long bout of dry days fraught with the hottest sun. I guess I could say that it’s inevitable. But I reserve the right to say that it shouldn’t, and I say that yes, it probably shouldn’t have rained. It should be done with after the morning chill and yesterday’s torrent and as the right equivalent balance this evening should be dry and warm with a touch of wind. And in that way, I’m being childish.


But that’s the way of the world; when it folds on you, the only way to fight back is to demand that what happened shouldn’t have happened. It’s a lost fight, but as fights can sometimes do, it may make you feel better. I guess it’s a consolation, somewhat, that sometimes after a fight you sit down and you cry, you bawl perhaps and shout, but at the end you tell yourself you lost, and it’s ok, really. It’s ok. You didn’t make it lose. You simply got bested.


It probably never worked like this. It probably worked differently and harder than this, maybe. I wouldn’t know. I’ll find out eventually, and that’s the sort of bridge you cross when you come to it.


I can only imagine, and what I’m imagining now, is that it worked that way, only that it’s real, and really, really painful.


*************


I don’t know what I’m writing. I was hoping that it’d reflect of what I felt after receiving some rather sad news, but the way I see it, it’s a hazy mirror behind a fog.


I’ll keep it at that, and I’ll keep it here, so perhaps one day I’d come about and get reminded of it. And then maybe it’ll make more sense than it does now.


And for now, I’ll go to sleep.

Two round things, and lines.

I’m still amazed, roughly 48 hours later, of what Wall-E did and still could do.

It’s an amazing movie. It’s the perfect amalgamation of the simplest and best of storytelling, of presenting visuals and music and sound and emotions, and at the of it even manages to throw a few rather serious matters into our faces (a world we can destroy so easily is one, overtly obese and hover-chair reliant humans are another).

But what got me the most is how utterly astounding it is to stoke the heart, evoke comfort and love and sadness, with just two coloured lights for eyes, a heart-wrenching “No..No..”, and a small gesture of hand.

That, I think, is the biggest achievement in animation history.

Bravo, Pixar, and Thank You.

******

I hope I’m not hyping it up too much.

But I feel that Wall-E had tapped on both the epitome and the deepest root in animation; if you can remember what Disney used to be able to do, then you’ll understand what I mean. For that reason itself, I can say that Wall-E is one of the greatest animated movies ever made.

(I’m not going to go into the other parts of the movie, namely the visuals and the music and the utter cuteness of most everything, because if you read just about any other movie review about it, professional or not, they’ve practically touched on it enough to wrinkle it and make it shrivel.)

It’s just a movie, and I think to some it’s probably nothing special, but how I see it, we’ve all forgotten how easy it was to be touched and transported by a simple movie of simple proportions.

Right, that’s about it. I’ve talked enough about Wall-E and if I start talking again I’ll be writing a thesis on it.

I find it peculiar. Curious, and somewhat precarious, but in a sense that I cannot place.


I don’t know why I think about it, anyhow.


I wonder, sometimes. I harbour a sense of unwonted romanticism and let myself be harkened back, unnecessarily, to that time where I made what I feel was the wrong choices, thronged with the what ifs and whys and come what mays that sat there smoking cigarettes and glare at you distinctly, harpies of the bygone memories.


I always think it’s stupid, but I always do it. I guess you can say that I can’t help it, and in that sense I’m hypocritical; I always believe that we can pull away from the mud and the muck, and go ahead. But still, there’re stains that never go.


So I guess it’s all that pondering that made me stand where I stand now, feeling weird and stupid about it, watching revelations after revelations tumble-weed down and away and thinking, man, isn’t this really odd? Ever asked yourself if things had happened differently and why the painting never materialised?


And then, I thought, the painting had always been romantic. Optimistic. Happy ending happy beginnings, you know? Not reality. No surprises. Surprised me, still.


I know it doesn’t make sense. Nothing ever will, not even to me. You’ll do better ignoring it. I do, too.


But still…


I find it peculiar.


I find it fascinating.

********************

CSA. Is. Done.

*Confetti!*


I had worried over it. I had dreaded it like I’ve dreaded it like I’ve dreaded dad after I accidentally broke his favourite teapot. Now it’s done, perhaps not very well or very satisfying, but it’s done and done and to hell with it, good riddance, sayonara sucker and bye bye babalu, it’s been a pleasure, yes sir-ree.


Now, to Media Ethics, Media Planning, BEC, Newspaper Management x2...


You don’t get a more hectic end-of-semester assignments rush.


I’ve been slaving ahead with the Creative Strategy Advertising assignments to the point I had to disregard everything else. We were largely behind schedule, rather messed up, confused and mostly up to our necks with other assignments.


Somehow we pulled through, I guess, as best as we could. At least it was considered so-so and not bad in general.


I can breathe easier, at least.


Nothing new lately; I vaguely remember classes anymore because I either spend my time spaced out trying to figure out better ad executions (not much different of an act as compared to daydreaming; largely imaginative) or trying to doodle myself into sense (which is like doodling normally, only that I do it in a notebook instead of the table).


I play a lot of cards lately, too. Somehow I managed to.


Roughly two weeks or so before the exams arrive. Dear god, I still don’t know half of what that’s taught in class.

**************

I called it a dynamic storyboard; I recalled unused Ratatouille storyboards that the developers bundled into the DVD release, which is sort of a pseudo-animation thing with actual music and voice acting, and in a desperate bid in trying to make a better presentation for CSA, churned this thing out;




It’s largely experimental; I spent an entire evening figuring it out while doing the chores. It’s simple, really. And it took 8 hours, mostly because I had to draw the slides with the mouse.


(I kick myself every time when I think about it; this is unnecessary work brought upon to myself by myself.)


No more. Not for last-ditch assignment situations, at least.

Teru no Uta




From Studio Ghibli's Tales From Earthsea (Gedo Senki), Goro Miyazaki's directorial debut and arguably weakest Ghibli movie produced.

The song is performed by Aoi Teshima, who voiced Therru (Teru) in the movie. You can check out the scene here, too.

Cheers

“No, no, I beg to differ, quite honestly; I don’t believe that cheesecakes are it. Black Forest… now, that’s the sweet stuff,” she said.

“Someone told me that it was the cheesecakes,” I said.

She shook her head histrionically, her tomboyish hair tossed around like a weird variation of a shampoo commercial.

“Cheesecakes are cheesy. You need… exquisiteness. You need… subtle, sublime charm. Passion. Mystery.” She smacked her lips.

“It’s just a cake,” I said.

She winked. “A cake to go somewhere. Think about it.”

And then she was a fisherman tossing the day’s catch into a wicker basket, yelling “4 KILOS!”. And after that, she was gone.

* * * * * *

My dream didn’t go exactly like that. It’s roughly like that, and I can only say roughly, because it’s a dream (my dreams are the type that are built like film reel badly edited and horribly cut; it jumps and stutters and most of the time the sound is out of sync), but I did remember that I was talked to about Black Forest cakes.


(I am also pretty sure the fisherman yelled 4 KILOS, but it might’ve been mandarin sounding like that. It might’ve even be German.)


This harkened back to a long, long time ago to that dream where a girl told me about cheesecakes. I think I might’ve written it down somewhere, but I forgot. It was the weirdest dream I ever had (this also accounting the other scenes the dream jumped into, one of them about ghosts and a frying wok), and I sort of forgot what the cheesecake was all about. I don’t know if anyone can remind me.


It’s funny when I dream about cakes. I don’t like cakes.


I do, however, to a certain degree, enjoy Black Forest cakes.


**********


Now, yesterday was a peculiar day.


You see, I woke up at 9.45 or so, and the first thing that struck me was that I was late for class. The second thing was the fact that both my father and my brother had left for work and outing respectively, and I was literally stuck home with no transportation and no company. I third thing was the several trucks rumbling into the front of my house, most of them with ladders and men, one of them a large wooden cylinder with huge wires twirled into it.


I went outside and asked the nearest uncle what’s up. He said that there’ll be a power-line wire upgrade for the street and that power will be out until 4 in the evening. He said that there was a notification prior. I walked back into the house, looked at the fridge and found the notification.


I said, oh shit.

I walked down to the shoplots and bought breakfast and lunch, and by the time I returned home the power had already been cut.


When the power’s out, my house is as dark as hell.


The power didn’t come back until it was 5. By that time, I was already mossy and the cobwebs had settled and the termites had eaten through.


This was what I did during the 6 hour power outage;


1) Play solitaire (with actual cards, of course) at the front door, where there’s a little light.

2) Do as much work as I could until the laptop battery ran out (1 hour and a half, with music on).

3) Go talk to the dogs. Lanna talked back. Marley slept.

4) Took the rabbit Happy out, petted him for a few seconds, and placed him back.

5) Found a gecko in the garden.

6) Read a book in the porch, but the mosquitoes annoyed me out of it.

7) Practised the Coin Matrix trick with 10 cents coins. Practised the coin drops absent-mindedly for a bit.

8) Raked leaves in the garden.

9) Shot at some birds with the BB pistol (intentionally missed; just to scare them off from stealing Marley’s leftovers).

10) Lay on the floor and thought of sleep.

11) Ate lunch at the porch, beside Marley.

12) Grabbed a bunch of manga from the store, settled down at the porch and read with the music playing from the phone. Made 3 books when the father came back.

13) Read the newspaper.

14) Retreated to the room to lie down and hope to sleep.


The first thing I did when the power came back was to turn on the PC and play Assassin’s Creed until it was time to feed the dogs.

Surprisingly, it wasn't quite a long day.

You have to do it, one way or another.

Ah, to be honest, this post took several tries to finally get up. Mostly it’s because I never actually got around to finish it, and whenever I did I forgot to post it up (it happens, because I type it down on MS Words and forgot to save it). And when I’m finally adamant on completing it, like tonight (and I’m sure I will), I realise that I have nothing much to tell.

The week was busy and hectic, and the aftermath was a tense, constricting air of anticipation; how it works into anticipation, I guess I wouldn’t able to describe. But there was, certainly, a bated breath of worry and wonderment, of which that seem to sprout out, raven like, to latch on a tree and watch wordlessly.

It’s like we’re all waiting for something bad to happen, or something to give reason and stand and shout and lob mash potatoes at one another. Like we’re waiting for something to blame.

(This is, of course, the stupid things I thought I felt and mostly best to do away as nonsense).

And the workload never ended. What ended, however, was the urgency of it. And I’m certainly not feeling it, aside from the way it settles down the gut like guilt (for all in the world it is), but heck; I’m supposed to be swamped and buried, but I’m here and I’m blogging and I have two tabs featuring Naruto and Slam Dunk.

Tomorrow! I swear, tomorrow I’ll get it done… tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow row row row rowrowyourboatgentlydownthestream…

******

I was food-poisoned on Tuesday.

Or rather, my epicurean self did. He insisted that his unrelenting thirst for epicure demands that I purchase that roadside nasi lemak I’ve eyed for a week, to be consumed for dinner. He said if I didn’t, I would forever feel the wrath of not having passion for good food (dear heavens no!), for he controls that side of my longings, so I gave in and bought it. I ate it for dinner.

And after I washed it down with water, I felt this feeling that went sorta felt like, oh shit. And the epicurean self, he was looking away shiftily and starting whistling.

And then I was feeling all rumbly-tumbly, as Pooh may have put it after some bad honey.

And then it was like the Brazilian Fire-breathing Troupe was performing for the Queen of England in my gut.

So I went to bed early and thought I’d sleep it out…

Then I woke up at 4 and barely left the toilet.

So I took Wednesday off from classes (impeccable timing, really; I had quite a lot of work and it needed to be tended to immediately). I gained a lot of reading time, and at one point I thought, wouldn’t it be great if the toilet had a drink stand and some sun so that I can read and drink lemonade? (this point, I knew I was seriously f-ed up).

But it wasn’t that bad. Least I didn’t go until I had to crawl around with shivering knees and the loss of all hope of living. In fact, come dinner, I was strangely full of appetite, but the parents forced porridge on me and told me to lay of the spice and fry-ies for a few days.

I thankfully still got the work done, and it’s thanks to me group mates who stayed around and helped.

As of now, I’ve given the epicurean self a good lecturing, and he promised no more roadside nasi lemak aside from the ones I trusted. I said, good enough. No more new roadside ones.

He grinned at me, and said, so, what’s for lunch?

I asked dad, and he said, rojak stall down in Sg. Chua.

Ah, noodles vegetables egg tofu bean-sprout cucur udang aaaaand sotong.

I’ve noted as I go, the way I would not know,
But hey, Why not stop?
The daisies are blooming.
Perfect day, perfect place
For picnicking down the mountains.

(Lalalalalala…)

A quick one before I nip away.

I’ve gotten some work done and is pretty proud of myself for finishing it before the strike of 12, and while the night is young and still brimming with the virginal, untested calls to write something unrelated to work, perhaps I can sneak a few words here before nicking back to the remaining workload.

(I can already feel Pauline glaring at me, sour lemons and venom of disapproval.)

I’ve bought a new PC. I figure that I should be thanking the person who helped me out all the way here in Big Bold Letters; so

Thank You Bryan

He had provided me the specs to look at, then fetched me around to Low Yat to get a deal and finally help fetch it back home with me; in the process, being late to fetch Li Mei home. I’m eternally grateful, and the man still chuck games at me to install; I guess I’ve repeated it too many times already, but I seriously can’t thank you enough, man.

The PC is a sweet deal, and I’ve set it up to be a gaming machine (don’t tell mom and dad), and managed to pay that half of it. At one point I call it the Black of Death, for the heck of it, but somehow I started calling him Bod and it’s something that’s gonna get stuck if I keep doing it.

It’s won’t be until sometime when I can sit and use it entirely as my own; it’s in the brother’s room, where the old PC used to be, and he’ll be using it until he leaves for the UK and takes this laptop with him.

I see a long future ahead of us, Bod and I.